Just to illustrate my point. I have been a fan of Doctor Who almost from birth, I remember seeing the episode The Horror of Fang Rock and since they never repeated them in those days I must have been 4 and a half years old. I have seen every episode since Pertwee started (the ones before that have gaps), many of them several times.

I have no objection at all to a female Doctor. She’s a good actress, was very strong in Broadchurch.

I’m more concerned about the writing than I am having a lady Doctor.

Doctor Who lives and dies by the writing. And we need sort of a soft reboot/palette-cleansing after six years of Moffatt’s bad science and lackluster plotting.

You know Lorcan, I thought you might have known me a bit better than that, as we’ve been talking stuff for how long now? Quite a while. I’ve never tried to be that. I will admit to being guilty of a default that anything I type on an internet board is opinion and nothing more.

That post you dislike wasn’t some cunning debate ruse or strategy, it was a quick summary of outlooks I’ve been seeing from people I’ve been talking SW with for a long time. And none of them are in a particularly good place now either after having seen TLJ. That’s what I intended it as. Clearly, in that respect it failed.

You want to talk about why the PT was so horrific for you? I’ll listen.

You want to talk Kylo? I think others would be better on that one because I hate the fucker.

He’s the one who shot the coup de grace into Death Star 2. He’s the one lifting a glass and partying happily at the Ewok’s celebration barbeque - and not bothered by ghosties! He’s the one who “stayed on target”. And he got to town and back with a vaporator all on his own!

I think they really betrayed the original characters. They save the galaxy and promise a new era of freedom. Then none of them can control their kid, who slaughters all the Jedi and goes off to form a new Empire. And in response Luke goes into hiding, Han moves in with his old college buddy again to fuck around the galaxy and Leia fails to secure a decent enough alliance to stop the First Order from getting a foothold.

Oh, god, totally this.

The sequel trilogy has invalidated every single thing that the first two trilogies accomplished.

As of the end of VIII, we’re right back at the Empire vs. the Rebellion again. That “New Republic” you were working at? Sorry, princess, not gonna happen…

And as for the characters…

When Vader turned on the Emperor, that was when he balanced the Force. The sequel trilogy gave us a new Emperor and a new Sith Apprentice. Oh, and his grandson, the last Skywalker, is a whiny, murderous little shit lord.

Leia is a failed politician. She also failed as a mother and a wife.

Han failed as a father and husband. He also lost the Millennium Falcon and got murdered by his own asshole son. (Maybe that’s why audiences avoided Solo. The character has been tainted.)

Luke failed as a Jedi Master and mentor. Then he put his tail between his legs, ran off to a remote planet, destroyed his X-Wing, and pouted for years while his protege wreaks havoc and death upon the galaxy.

And, hell, look what it did to the new characters.

Poe Dameron was a skilled pilot, and all-around decent fellow. TFA turns him into a hot head that gets people killed, accidentally reveals their plans to the First Order, stages a mutiny, and gets more people killed. Granted, it all comes down to Johnson’s ham-fisted writing, but that’s the takeaway we’re supposed to have.

Finn is, for a second film, non-committed to the Resistance until manic pixie dream mechanic shows him the error of his ways.

And Rey… Rey. In TFA, Rey was a confident, capable, self-realized character. (A little Mary Sue-ish, but that could have been rectified in VIII.) In TLJ, she’s vacillating and confused, and spends most of her time making googy eyes at a shirtless Kylo Ren. Oh, yeah, that guy who murdered one of her friends, nearly killed another one, and tortured her. But she thinks she can “fix” him. Even though he never comes off as anything but creepy, stalkery, and rapey. Yeah, that ends well in real life. Nice role model for all of those little girls cosplaying as Rey.

I think it’s easy to assume the good guys have all the answers. They didn’t have all the answers before A New Hope, which is something we knew before the prequels ever happened. The thing the original trilogy definitively established was that the Emperor was done away with and Vader was redeemed. Why expect everything else? In American history, it took years after the Declaration of Independence to put the country together. We talk about “hidden presidents before Washington” if we want to be really snooty. The way Star Wars fans talk, they want a miracle. Realistically, the remnants of the Empire had an infrastructure that the Rebels lacked. Most of all, they had a military. I assume the First Order is a military coup d’etat. Simple as that. The New Republic didn’t have what it needed to rebuild. The Imperial forces stepped in.

How can Kylo Ren be anyone’s favorite Star Wars character? He’s like a 4 Chan poster. You’d expect him to have a terrible beard and an anime pillow that he calls his girlfriend. He’d promote the Red Pill as a way of life and bitch about Chads. After torturing Rey he’d boast how he didn’t feel her up when he knew he totally could have. He’s the son every parent would dread. Darth Vader must be spinning in his grave.

How can Kylo Ren be anyone’s favorite Star Wars character? He’s like a 4 Chan poster. You’d expect him to have a terrible beard and an anime pillow that he calls his girlfriend. He’d promote the Red Pill as a way of life and bitch about Chads. After torturing Rey he’d boast how he didn’t feel her up when he knew he totally could have. He’s the son every parent would dread. Darth Vader must be spinning in his grave.

Also, when Rian Johnson was explaining his decision to have Rey’s parents be “nobodies,” he did because that was the worst possible thing she could hear. Rian Johnson had Kylo Ren neg Rey. Right from the PUA playbook.

Filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan isn’t responsible for creating the Star Wars saga so much as bringing it to life. A New York Times profile of the writer and his son, Jonathan, Kasdan details his early involvement, after being hired on The Empire Strikes...

He really should have. After they spend the first chunk of RotJ saving him, he has nothing to do for the rest of the movie.

The following February, Del Rey released Foster’s sequel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which was originally conceived to be the basis of a low-budget fallback film in the event that Star Wars didn’t do well. The short book, which took place about two years after the Battle of Yavin, featured Luke, Leia, droids, and Darth Vader on the swampy planet Mimban (which makes its first film appearance in Solo). Following explicit instructions from Lucas, Foster omitted Solo from the story, because Harrison Ford hadn’t yet committed to reprising the role.

In terms of how Episode IX continues things, just about everything I’ve seen reckons there has to be a time jump due to how TLJ ended. What if there isn’t? What if, in great contrast to the other trilogies, the entirety of the ST takes place across 1-2 massively destructive weeks?

On a lighter note, the recent Han / Lando tale Last Shot revealed a startling reason for why the galaxy might very rapidly become extremely pissed off with the First Order: Hosnian Prime played a key and irreplaceable role in the galaxy’s caf supply!